Holland thought that the thing Dade was describing was an example of conditional invisibility. If an individual met a specific condition—being non-magical or magical—then the spell was triggered for them, or it wasn’t. It was the same for the Lurlina faeries, in theory; if you met the condition of being older than fifteen, the invisibility charm was activated for you.

They didn’t know anything about Diagon Alley, which was the British version of… actually, Holland couldn’t think of an American analogue. Diagon Alley was the wizarding London equivalent of the Mall of America or something. The United States was too big to have a single, centralized shopping district for wizards; there were more likely to be a few for each state, in the major cities. There was a wizarding market in Pittsburgh, but if Holland or Bryony needed special products or equipment they sometimes made the trip to Fourteenth Virtue Way in Philadelphia, which had way more variety. The entrance was, surprisingly for a wizarding structure, powered by electricity. You had to cast a charm that shot a small bolt of lightning out of your wand on an Employees Only door at Franklin Court, and then you could step through to the wizarding street.

So he did have a point about magic used for location concealment, but Holland was still fairly certain anti-Muggle spells used the same principle of conditional activation. Maybe Dade was just being pedantic about the definitions of conditional or invisibility. He seemed like a pedantic sort of person.

Anyway, in the interest of “oh, good, Dade is talking to me again,” Holland opted not to pursue the argument. Not that he had ever talked to them very much before this semester, but lately he had been actively dodging them. Which, like they’d told Rose, was fair, but kind of sad. If Dade actually was a young nonbinary person, Holland could be helpful. And he only had this semester and next year to benefit from them (and Maverick, who actually had a dorm room close to Dade) being around.

He was scowling again, which was probably not an indicator of ideal partnership, but oh well, there wasn’t much Holland could do about that. They followed his lead toward a bush, hanging back a little while Dade did a more thorough investigation. “It’s silly to have you here just to play ‘I Spy.’ If you find one, feel free to cast,” Holland began, and then stopped because Dade was beckoning them toward the bush. Holland approached, leaning more into Dade’s personal space than they would’ve outside the context of faerie hunting.

Of course, Holland couldn’t see anything in the bush. Professor Embers had told the upperclassmen to cast the spell to make the faeries visible to them first, but Holland didn’t see the point of that. The faerie might flee if they took the time to do that, and since Dade was clear about where the faerie was, it’d be simpler to cast immobulus first. On the other hand, if Holland got the faerie with the revealing spell, they’d be able to see it, which would make the hunting aspect easier even if the faerie got away. But Dade seemed to be indicating silence and decidedly wasn’t casting a spell, and Holland could do the Immobilizing Charm non-verbally. They aimed at the crossed branches Dade was pointing at and silently cast the spell.

The seventeen-year-old had an urge to ask whether they had gotten the faerie, but they resisted. Instead they looked expectantly at Dade. If they’d missed, Dade could signal and Holland could try again. Otherwise he could just collect the faerie and then Holland would have the chance to cast mediocris revelio.

Dade scowled. Holland talked a lot, as it turned out, and it wasn’t all stuff he agreed with. He knew faeries had different magic than wizards, he wasn’t an idiot, he just thought that wizards should ... more

Nonverbal magic was something that Dade was familiar with, like anyone else who spent time around adult wizards and witches. Professor McKindy used nonverbal magic a lot, and sometimes he didn’t use... more